Over the last century baseball enthusiasts have created numerous board, action, and electronic games to simulate the play of a baseball game on a personal level. These games have often been based on actions and reactions without taking into account the strategic decisions made by the actual players during the course of play. Baseball board games based on physical action often leave the course of a game substantially to chance, rather than to the player's decisions for directing the course of events. These type of games often use the role of the dice to determine outcome. The board games often use projectiles to simulate a baseball and a means for propelling the projectile to a particular location or hole such as a spring, to simulate the ball in motion. The outcome of this type of game, such as that disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,183,267 issued to Kohler, is determined by the skill of the player in physically getting a ball to a series of particular holes or locations on a board.
Many of these games do not give a player choices, such as whether to steal a base, to swing in a certain manner, or determine whether a ball will be hit into the air or on the ground. Additionally, many of these games do not allow a player to choose whether to throw a man out, or the manner in which a "play" is to be carried out. Games which have attempted to address this issue have often utilized cumbersome and highly complex game boards to create the varying scenarios of play. For instance, the baseball board game and method of play in U.S. Pat. No. 5,129,651 issued to Tobias, Jr., sets up a highly complex numbering and dice system to determine outcome.
In view of these restrictions and complexities, it would be desirable to have a simple baseball board game which recreated the strategic decisions, player movements and human aspects of the actual game of baseball, but in a portable board game for personal use.
For the purposes of this disclosure, the following terms shall have the respective meanings. The term "playing field board" shall mean a board used by all players for positioning ball and player markers and having a baseball diamond and a modified polar coordinate system drawn on its surface. The term "player board" shall mean a board used by either the offensive or defensive player of the baseball board game to direct action on the "playing field board."